On the third floor of the Cathays Park government office rests the illustrious office of Mick Antoniw MS, current Counsel General for Wales. Before his political ascension, Mick Antoiw was an undergraduate reading Law at Cardiff, a time he evidently remembers distinctly, such as his recollection of the “quagmire of politics” on campus centred upon issues from the coup in Chile to South African apartheid.
However, he speaks bluntly of the student population being “more middle class” and those from “working class backgrounds being a small population”.
When I question him as to why studying law appealed, he eloquently states of how “law is pure politics” and how “it is not about the administration of rules but the execution of power”.
Given his area of legal intrigue was “things that relate to politics and the labour movement”, it comes as no surprise he soon began working for Thompson’s Solicitors, in a move he describes as a “natural step given the firm being very political and it’s association with the labour movement.”
Elected as a councillor to the South Glamorgan County Council in 1981, one can sense his animosity at the Thatcherite reforms of the 1980s, as Antoniw perceives that “the 80s saw the abandonment of the concept of equality with wealth becoming concentrated into fewer and fewer hands.”
However, much to his delight Wales would vote for devolution five years after the departure of Margaret Th atcher as Prime Minister, in a vote that he believes was primarily fuelled by the people’s desire to “not be controlled by Westminster any more” and as part of a broader growth of people focusing on the importance of “regional identity as also seen in Liverpool and Manchester with their regional mayors.” For Antoniw, the 1997 vote was symbolic of a “substantial cultural change” in Wales, a change that “devolution has helped to nurture.”
Despite the votes for devolved powers, Antoniw remains perturbed by the political climate, particularly his view of “Parliament becoming less representative in terms of class” and the issues of leadership courses, such as Oxford’s Political Leadership Scheme, which “implies there is a well-educated class who should decide on behalf of the poor, uneducated class”.
On the issues surrounding so-called ‘career politicians’, Antoniw espouses the view that “politics should not be a career but a vocation” and for “people who believe there is a purpose to make society better” before he candidly quips “maybe we need less lawyers”; although he is quick to stress the ”importance of having a few”.
Looking forward to the future, Mick Antoniw boldly asserts that “there is no doubt the Tories will be wiped out at the next election”, given that the party are now “incapable of doing or changing anything” and are currently “clinging on by their fingernails” to power.
Only time will tell if the Counsel General’s electoral optimism will be substantiated via a general election defeat for the Conservatives in what would be the first electoral victory for Labour since 2005.